Jason McEwen

Dr Jason McEwen

Research Fellow

Organisation

University College London

Research summary

We have a good general understanding of the history and evolution of our Universe as described by the Big Bang model. However, many details of this scenario remain elusive. The mechanism which seeded structure in our Universe is not yet well understood. Without a mechanism to seed cosmic structure, we would not observe galaxies and clusters of galaxies in our Universe today and, most likely, we would not exist. A deep understanding of the origin and formation of cosmic structure is thus fundamental to our understanding of the Universe and our place in it. We are about to enter a new era of observational cosmology, where we hope to resolve many outstanding questions about the structure of our Universe.

Forthcoming cosmological observations have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the origin and formation of cosmic structure. However, to ensure that new telescopes reach their full potential, it is imperative that scientific analyses keep pace with the improvements in instrumentation. Cosmological observations are inherently made on the celestial sphere. The scientific analysis of these observations must thus respect the spherical geometry in which the observations live. I develop new mathematical analysis techniques defined on spherical geometries to extract cosmological information from the observations of next-generation telescopes. Through these analyses I hope to gain a fundamental understanding of the original and formation of the cosmological structure of our Universe. Furthermore, the mathematical methods that I will develop will be applicable whenever data is collected on spherical geometries and will also find application beyond cosmology: for example, in geophysics, planetary science, molecular biology, industrial manufacturing, spherical acoustics, and computer graphics.